The Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers

by Margaret George

  I have restrained myself from describing More’s trials and arguments in all their details, since the end was the end. It is torture to retrace each step and say where one action, one word, could have altered the outcome. His family came to visit him in the Tower and did their utmost to persuade him to sign the Oath, excuse himself, liberate himself.

  In the Tower he spent his time writing. There were several books, some in Latin—Of the Sorrow, Weariness, Fear and Prayer of Christ before his Capture was the longest—and others in English: A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation; The Four Last Things. The latter described the four things that a man on his deathbed must deal with: ly cys of heaven.

  More examined the moment of death carefully and concluded that there was no “easy” death: “for if thou die no worse death, yet at the leastwise lying in thy bed, thy head shooting, thy back aching, thy veins beating, thine heart panting, thy throat rattling, thy flesh trembling, thy mouth gaping, thy nose sharping, thy legs cooling, thy fingers fumbling, thy breath shortening, all thy strength fainting, thy life vanishing, and thy death drawing on” was in store for you.

  From his window in the Tower, More saw Richard Reynolds of Syon and the Carthusian monks being carted out of the Tower for their felons’ execution at Tyburn. Reportedly he looked at them longingly and then said to his daughter Margaret (who continued to visit him and beg him to recant), “Lo, dost thou not see, Meg, that these blessed fathers be now as cheerfully going to their deaths as bridegrooms to their marriage?”

  Then he berated himself for his “sinful” life. He was ever obsessed with his own sinfulness and even of the sorrow of the world at large and its purpose. He wrote:

  But if we get so weary of pain and grief that we perversely attempt to

  change this world, this place of labour and penance, into a joyful haven

  of rest, if we seek Heaven on earth, we cut ourselves off for ever from

  true happiness, and will drown ourselves in penance when it is too late

  to do any good, and in unbearable, unending tribulations as well.

  More had at last embraced his dark side. When he closed the gate at Chelsea on his way to his first examination, he was said to have murmured, “I thank God, the field is won at last.” He had turned his back on that quietude of Chelsea, on his wife and family, too, and thanked God that they would no longer be there to torment him, keeping him from becoming that monk who had first, in youth, served with the Carthusians as a novice. He never wished to see them again. That was what neither I, nor others, for a great long time, could comprehend.

  He had said it clearly, himself, to Margaret, when she came to visit him in the Tower. “I assure thee, on my faith, my own good daughter, if it had not been for my wife and you that be my children, I would not have failed long ere this to have closed myself in as strait a room—and straiter, too.”

  Now he had passed the test, forsworn—albeit belatedly—the things of this world, and could pledge his vows in blood. Undoubtedly, to one of that mind, it was a great relief. He had not disappointed or betrayed himself to a lesser life.

  The execution was fixed for July 6, 1535. He told his daughter, “It were a day very meet and convenient for me—Saint Thomas’ Even.” His assignation with eternity was neatly fitted in with the Church calendar, which seemed to soothe him.

  How could I feel upon receiving this news? Like a father whose daughter has chosen to marry unwisely, yet is deliriously happy in the meanwhile? Should I rejoice with her, grieving in my heart? Or should I use my authority to forbid the match?

  I knew no action I could take would prevent this marriage. It had been contracted since More’s earliest days.

  Yet I wanted him here with me, on earth!

  Evenim in the Tower and sought to convey my anguish and love.

  Aye, flattering Fortune, look thou never so fair,

  Nor never so pleasantly begin to smile,

  As though thou wouldst my ruin all repair,

  During my life thou shalt not me beguile!

  Trust I shall God to enter in a while

  His haven of Heaven, sure and uniform:

  Even after thy calm, look I for a storm.

  So he longed always to be beyond any possible ties or recall to earthly matters.

  LXIII

  Fisher was executed on June twenty-second. His judges had pronounced the same sentence on him as that meted out to the Carthusian monks.

  “I cannot imagine such a death,” Anne had said, upon reading the sentence.

  “It is the usual felon’s death,” I replied. “Have you never known of what it consists?” Every English child had witnessed executions. Tyburn, where commoners were executed, was a popular public excursion place. People took their food and blankets and forced their children to watch, “lest you fall likewise into crime.” It was instructional. I had always thought it was a pity that hell was not equally observable.

  “No. I have never watched an execution. Nor do I wish to.” She was agitated.

  “Perhaps you should. As Queen, you should know to what we condemn felons.”

  “It is the fire part I cannot bear!” she said. “To be burnt, to be touched by that evil, hot, licking, consuming thing—oh, they knew well what they did when they made hell a place of flames! I would never go there, never, never—”

  “Then do not sin, my sweet.” I smiled. The remedy was at hand. Those who did not wish to go to hell knew precisely what they should do to avoid it. It was all laid out.

  “Spare Fisher!” she said. “Do not let the flames touch him. No one deserves that!”

  “A signature on a paper would have prevented it.”

  “Even so ...”

  I had intended all along to commute his sentence, to allow him a painless beheading. But Anne’s outburst puzzled me. It showed me yet another side of her.

  “Have you long been troubled by this fear of fire?” I asked her.

  “Always. Since I was a child, when once in my room a lighted piece of wood escaped from the fireplace. It landed on a stool nearby. It glowed and then subsided. I went to sleep watching it—and then awoke, suddenly, to a blaze. The horrible heat, the diabolical grin of the fire—‘I fooled you, now I have you....’ ” She shuddered. “And the crackling, the roasting ...”

  “Be at peace. Fisher shall not face that,” I assured her.

  Indeed, Fisher was led out onto a tidy scaffold at Tower Hill, just outside the Tower walls. He had always been ascetic and gaunt, but his fourteen months in the Tower had turned him into a “death’s-head,” est shirt, as it was the garment with which he would enter Paradise.

  That should have been that. But it was the beginning of a set of different challenges to my reign.

  Fisher’s severed head was parboiled, as was the custom, and set up on London Bridge. The midsummer weather was hot and stagnant; foul odours rose from the Thames, which sloshed back and forth in an enervated fashion. Fisher’s head (minus its Cardinal’s hat—that would have been too macabre a touch) should have rotted and turned into a horror. But it did not. Instead, it seemed to glow and become more lifelike every day. People began to gather on the bridge to pay homage to it, to tell it their troubles....

  To ask it to intercede for them.

  Fisher was on the way to becoming a saint.

  I ordered this ended. In the night my servants took down the head and threw it into the river.

  Fisher, the incipient saint, was checked in his progress. But the weather, and the mood, continued ugly. There were pestilential vapours about, infecting the entire populace. It was best to do More now, and have the whole business finished. Then, that being done, I could go out on progress, ride out amongst the people, talk with them, soothe them. They needed me.

  An unhappy languor had fallen over the court, as in one of those tales of enchantment wherein a witch has put everyone under a spell. Anne seemed particularly affected, alternately nervous and apathetic. Others moved about as though their brains had flown
, or were held for ransom.

  Then Anne told me her news, and that broke my spell.

  “I am with child.” Magic words. Words that called to action.

  “Praised be God!” I exclaimed. All would be right: out of these present troubles and hideous upheavals, the original purpose of which I had all but forgotten, a Prince would come.

  I clasped her to me, feeling her slender supple body, all encased in silk. “Praised be God.”

  More’s execution was to be July sixth, a fortnight after Fisher’s. I granted his daughter Margaret permission to witness the actual execution. He bequeathed her his hair shirt (yes, he had continued to wear it all through his captivity), and hearsay is that it has been preserved in the family as a relic to this day. He sent no message to his wife.

  It was an oppressive summer day, not columbine-fresh as some can be, but lowering and heavy. The humours in the air hung waiting, malevolent.

  Anne, in her characteristic, brave fashion, had attempted to mock it by staging a “Pope Julius” party in her apartments. She had had a number of boards painted up for the game that had been invented in the summer of 1529 featuring Pope Julius (he who had granted the original dispensation in 1503), with stops called Intrigue, Matrimony, War, and Divorce. She had set up tables with rounds to determine which players should be matched, culminating in a Master Board with a grand prize. The “tournament” was to beginased in breezes. Rose-scented incense supplied the sweetness that was lacking in the reeking outside air. As we were at Greenwich, there was the blessing of some slight breezes, borne inland from the sea. It was undoubtedly worse in the other palaces.

  The entire court was assembled for Anne’s “tournament,” from the Privy Council through the ladies-in-waiting. Crum was there, looking eager for the gambling; the Seymour brothers, Edward and Tom, back from a fruitless diplomatic mission in Paris; Norfolk, Anne’s uncle; and ... as I have said, everyone.

  Anne, looking almost as yellow as her gown in the oppressive heat and her condition, flitted about explaining the rules of both the game and her tournament to everyone. At the tinkle of a bell, all began. I was seated at table with Thomas Audley, Richard Riche, the Solicitor-General, and Jane Seymour, Edward and Tom’s younger sister, whom I had not seen before.

  They were all people of velvet: Audley so yielding and cautious; Riche so smooth and pleasing; Mistress Seymour, so soft and comforting. They played according to character, and as a result I won the game easily, being the only one to play boldly and abrasively.

  Pope Julius. It was a clever game, but belonged to simpler times. The truth was that Pope Julius was dead, and there had been three Popes since. My enemy, Pope Clement (or had he been my friend? Certainly I could never have had a more apathetic foe) was now dead, succeeded by a much more hardheaded gentleman, Alessandro Farnese, called Paul III. Rumour had it that Paul intended to implement what Clement had only threatened: a Holy War against me. The Roman Catholic Church was on the offensive at last, having gathered its forces after being stunned by the initial successes of Martin Luther. Pope Julius was simple to understand and manipulate; he made a fitting board game.

  I was vaguely disappointed when the game ended, although it ended under my own aggressive bidding. I had enjoyed my partners, enjoyed especially Mistress Seymour and the way she held her cards and pushed her token about the board. I cannot explain why observing the hand and arm motions of a graceful woman should prove so appealing, like a ceremony of sorts, a dance.

  The bell was rung; we must change tables. Outside I saw the heat waves reflected in the light coming in the windows, rising from the river.

  Noon. More was being led out.

  Going up the scaffold, he turned to the Lieutenant of the Tower. “I pray you, Master Lieutenant, see me safe up and, for my coming down, let me shift for myself. ”

  “Now you come to this game with points already,” explained Anne. “You may keep them, only demerits will subtract from the total score—”

  He put his head down on the block and made a joke with the executioner. In the Tower he had not shaved, but had grown a long beard. He smoothed it neatly down and asked the headsman not to strike it, as “it has done no treason.”

  We played a second round. At my table were those who had already won—Cromwell, Norfolk, and Edward Seymour. This game was more difficult. My opponents did not hold back and kept strategies in their heads the entire time, not merely one or two plays, but contingency plans as well.

  The air grew stifling. Sweat gathered about my neck, wilting my fair linen collar.

  I asked. He laughed (a smug, hateful laugh) and waved a gloved hand. The walls crashed and turned to water, and bubbled up under the chair I was sitting in. I was carried away, spinning, my arms frantically clasping the chair arms, my legs on the rungs, carried down a dark watery chute....

  I awoke. The sound of water was a deluge around me. It was beating against the windows, and I could hear trickles. Somewhere it had found an entrance, had nosed open a little crack between stones or through a piece of loose mortar.

  My mind cleared. Rain. There could be no rain tonight. It was impossible. The sky had been absolutely clear at sunset. The soaked fields had been granted respite. The crops would recover, and the harvest be normal. That was what the clear sky had promised.

  The downpour, which had penetrated even into my sleeping mind, continued to soak the already waterlogged earth outside.

  It has not stopped raining since More died, the common people were saying. On the night of July sixth it had begun to rain, and it had continued, intermittently, for the six weeks since. The vegetable crops had already been drowned, rotted. The grains—oats, barley, wheat—by far the most important, as yet were salvageable. But if they were lost!

  Damn this rain! I leapt from my bed and went over to the window. It was not a sweet, soft rain. Ugly, hard thrusts of water were striking against the glass.

  Henry Norris stirred on his pallet and rolled over. He no longer slept at the foot of my bed, as it was too close to the outer, waterlogged wall and invited mildew. Instead he had moved to an inside wall.

  It was raining on More’s head, which had turned black impaled on Tower Bridge (so they told me). At least it was not growing into an object of veneration and superstition like Fisher’s. I myself had not seen it, nor did I intend to.

  This whole business disgusted me, sickened me. Only let this summer be over, let a year’s cycle come round, so that every vicissitude of weather (all normal, all normal) was not converted into an “omen” or a “judgment.” This time next year there would be an heir to the throne; Anne’s boy would be born. Then see how they would remember More—not at all! They were fickle, shallow creatures, the people. Anne’s son would give them instant lethe, instant forgetfulness, on the subject of More, Fisher, the Oaths.

  One thing cancelled out the other—did it not? There could be no gains without payments. And these things were my payment for Anne.

  The rain hissed at me.

  Do your worst, I dared it. Do your worst, and I shall yet prevail.

  I badly needed to make a summer progress about the realm, to reassure my people and to take readings on their minds. Yet, because of Anne’s pregnancy, I dared not risk her travelling, even in the comparative comfort of a litter, at this time; and I myself would stay with her, watching over her and taking care of her.

  She was difficult during this pregnancy, hard to please. She had fancies, one of which was that as long as Katherine and Mary lived, she could not bear a living son. She needed music to soothe her, and therefore Mark Smeaton mus221; She needed entertainments to amuse her, and therefore I brought the Oxford players to court, and bade them write and perform some “fantastical history of times past,” so as to entertain the Queen.

  They did so, writing a history of Dr. Faustus and performing it most grandiosely, with red-tinted smoke and demons dragging the damned Faustus down to hell. Anne was delighted with it and showed lively interest in the red smoke an
d sudden apparitions of the Devil, since she had attempted a similar effect in “Cardinal Wolsey Descending to Hell.” Hell always interested people from an artistic standpoint.

  She exhibited none of the behaviour I had come to expect from a pregnant woman: the happiness, the contentment, the interest in the coming child. She was restless and self-absorbed, with glittering, feverish eyes. Yet that was of no moment, as long as the child was healthy. Anne was like no other woman in the world; her pregnancy was as singular and disturbing as she herself.

  The cursed rain kept up all through the remainder of the summer. There were occasional fair days, as if to tease us, like a beautiful woman who has no intention of yielding her favours but continues to make promises. The first grain crop was now ruined, and the flooding of the fields made it impossible for a second to be sown. This winter there would be hardship at the least and starvation at the worst.

  The people had stepped up their visits to shrines, imploring Our Lady, Thomas a Becket, and all the others to hear them. The monasteries reaped a tidy profit from all this, as Crum never failed to remind me. I had allowed him to appoint inspectors to compile records of the assets and holdings of all the clergy in England, to be summarized in a Valor Ecclesiasticus. They had fanned out eagerly over the realm to get their information.

  Crum liked the fact that offerings were pouring into the shrines’ coffers all across the land. I found it ominous. More’s head had disappeared from London Bridge. Who had taken it, and why? Were they setting up a shrine to him, too?